The Use of Decision Support Tools and Technology into the NIMS

We welcome your thoughts and ideas on the following topics, which address inclusion of language discussing the use of technology into the NIMS:

The Use and Importance of Social Media

The NIMS does not include language addressing the use or importance of social media or other crowd-sourced communications pathways during an incident. Social media can be used to inform and enhance situational awareness as well as inform the public during an incident. Please share your ideas on the benefits of social media, before, during, and after an incident as a means of gathering situational awareness and disseminating actionable information to the public.

Decision support tools, GIS and other technologies are widely used to support a variety of disaster management activities to include situational awareness, visualization and information analysis that transforms data into actionable information that informs preparedness and disaster operations across the five mission areas. The NIMS update should incorporate decision support and geographic information systems (GIS) concepts and best practices, including common location language, into the incident support, coordination, and management components of the NIMS. Please share your ideas on how the technologies listed above and their impact incident management should be reflected in the NIMS.

Please feel free to comment on or discuss any or all of these topics. We look forward to hearing from you!

I agree full with incorporating GIS even more into the planning and decision making process, as well as into other operations activities.
GIS is not just maps, it's a whole system to manage/analyze data for anything that can have, or be connected in some way to something with a geographic reference.
There are a lot of people out there with an interest in GIS, but there isn't much training available for them (especially
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Virtual coordination into incident support, coordination, and management in support of incident operations will tend to
be unreliable during floods, earthquakes, and cyber-attacks. This appears to be very risky approach during TYPE-1,2, and TYPE-3 incidents especially where a local operating telephone company central office becomes damaged or destroyed during the incident. This was evidenced during 9-11 and KATRINA-2005.
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Voting

With the progress the RiskMAP PTS have made in producing regulatory [among other] 100 year Depth Grids (DGs);it would be a win-win strategy to provide RESTful APIs, or via any other means (cloud storage, FTP, etc), so the said DGs could be directly consumed in Hazus. This would benefit the RiskMAP Database as well would eliminate the bottle-neck Hazus Flood Level 1 processing, which by default is less accurate than the
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Voting

While haboobs may be thrilling to watch, when they roll in, they can decrease visibility on the roads, cause damage and spread the spores that cause valley fever. Local inventor Dan Sinclair says his binding substance mixed with water creates a binding barrier that can prevent wildfires, settle dust, and also be good for the environment